Are fire officers eligible for overtime? Does rank matter? In this episode Curt and Bill Maccarone discuss overtime issues associated with fire officers. Many fire departments consider some or all of their officers to be exempt from the overtime requirements of the FLSA under the “white collar” exemption. Court cases between 1985 and 2003 were all over the board. In 2004, the US Department of Labor implemented the First Responder Regulations in an effort to clarify the difficult issues.